Understanding KNowledge as a commons

Understanding Knowledgeas a Commons From Theory to Practice Understanding Knowledge as a Commons From Theory to Practice edited by Charlotte Hess and Elinor Ostrom Knowledge in digital f

Understanding Knowledge

as a Commons

From Theory to Practice

Understanding Knowledge as a Commons

From Theory to Practice

edited by Charlotte Hess and Elinor Ostrom

Knowledge in digital form offers unprecedented access to informationthrough the Internet but at the same time is subject to ever-greaterrestrictions through intellectual property legislation, overpatenting,licensing, overpricing, and lack of preservation Looking at knowledge

as a commons—as a shared resource—allows us to understand both

its limitless possibilities and what threatens it In Understanding

Knowledge as a Commons, experts from a range of disciplines discuss

the knowledge commons in the digital era—how to conceptualize it,protect it, and build it

Contributors consider the concept of the commons historically andoffer an analytical framework for understanding knowledge as ashared social-ecological system They look at ways to guard againstenclosure of the knowledge commons, considering, among other topics,the role of research libraries, the advantages of making scholarlymaterial available outside the academy, and the problem of disappearingWeb pages They discuss the role of intellectual property in a newknowledge commons, the open access movement (including possiblefunding models for scholarly publications), the development of associ-ational commons, the application of a free/open source framework toscientific knowledge, and the effect on scholarly communication ofcollaborative communities within academia, and offer a case study ofEconPort, an open access, open source digital library for students andresearchers in microeconomics The essays clarify critical issues thatarise within these new types of commons, and offer guideposts forfuture theory and practice

Charlotte Hess is Director of the Digital Library of the Commons at

Indiana University Elinor Ostrom is Arthur F Bentley Professor of

Political Science, Codirector of the Workshop in Political Theory and

Policy Analysis at Indiana University, and Codirector of the Center for

the Study of Institutions, Population, and Environmental Change (CIPEC)

at Indiana University

ContributorsDavid Bollier, James Boyle, James C Cox, Shubha Ghosh, Charlotte Hess, NancyKranich, Peter Levine, Wendy Pradt Lougee, Elinor Ostrom, Charles M Schweik, PeterSuber, J Todd Swarthout, Donald J Waters

communications/scholarly publishing

The MIT Press Massachusetts Institute of Technology Cambridge, Massachusetts 02142 http://mitpress.mit.edu

edited by Charlotte Hess and Elinor Ostrom

Jacket art by Charlotte Hess.

TLFeBOOK

Understanding Knowledge as a Commons

From Theory to Practice

edited by Charlotte Hess and Elinor Ostrom

The MIT Press

Cambridge, Massachusetts

London, England

© 2007 Massachusetts Institute of Technology

All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or informa- tion storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher MIT Press books may be purchased at special quantity discounts for business

or sales promotional use For information, please e-mail special_sales@ mitpress.mit.edu or write to Special Sales Department, The MIT Press, 55 Hayward Street, Cambridge, MA 02142.

This book was set in Sabon by SNP Best-set Typesetter Ltd., Hong Kong and printed and bound in the United States of America.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Understanding knowledge as a commons : from theory to practice / edited by Charlotte Hess and Elinor Ostrom.

p cm.

Includes index.

ISBN-13: 978-0-262-08357-7 (hardcover : alk paper)

ISBN-10: 0-262-08357-4 (hardcover)

1 Knowledge management 2 Information commons I Hess, Charlotte.

II Ostrom, Elinor.

HD30.2.U53 2007

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This book is dedicated to the memory of Gerry Bernbom (1952–2003)who continues to be a source of inspiration and wisdom.

Preface ix

I Studying the Knowledge Commons 1

1 Introduction: An Overview of the Knowledge Commons 3

Charlotte Hess and Elinor Ostrom

2 The Growth of the Commons Paradigm 27

David Bollier

3 A Framework for Analyzing the Knowledge Commons 41

Elinor Ostrom and Charlotte Hess

II Protecting the Knowledge Commons 83

4 Countering Enclosure: Reclaiming the Knowledge Commons 85

III Building New Knowledge Commons 169

7 Creating an Intellectual Commons through Open Access 171

Peter Suber

8 How to Build a Commons: Is Intellectual Property Constrictive, Facilitating, or Irrelevant? 209

Shubha Ghosh

9 Collective Action, Civic Engagement, and the Knowledge

Wendy Pradt Lougee

12 EconPort: Creating and Maintaining a Knowledge Commons 333

James C Cox and J Todd Swarthout

Glossary 349

Index 353

viii Contents

In the spring of 2004, Charlotte Hess and Elinor Ostrom hosted ameeting titled “Workshop on Scholarly Communication as a Commons.”The idea of this working session grew out of several parallel events,including the discussions at the Conference on the Public Domain organized and chaired by James Boyle at Duke University in November

2001.1It is also an outgrowth of the many years of research, case studies,and theoretical work on the commons undertaken at the Workshop inPolitical Theory and Policy Analysis (Workshop), Indiana University.While earlier work focused primarily on the study of natural resources

as commons, more recent interest has developed at the Workshop on the scholarly information and digital media as commons, the erosion ofthose commons through recent legislation, and the necessity of buildingnew institutions in order to sustain those commons An early attempt atstruggling with these issues was our development of the Digital Library

of the Commons,2 which seeks to combine digital preservation of high-quality information, self-publication, and multimedia storage, whileserving as the primary reference tool for interdisciplinary research on thecommons

The two-day event, funded by The Andrew W Mellon Foundation,brought together leading interdisciplinary scholars to examine thecurrent state of research and development of scholarly communicationand the knowledge commons Many of the participating scholars hadalready been thinking and writing about one of the many “commons”aspects of scholarly communication The first objective of the meetingwas to produce papers that could give other scholars as well asresearchers and practitioners who create digital resources and affectdigital policy, a sense of the current status of research on scholarly com-munication as an information commons, an idea of where it is headed,

and an awareness of critical dilemmas and policy issues We deliberatelyassembled a group of scholars who could address both theoretical andempirical concerns—that is, who were able to ground discussion offuture research and action in a thorough synthesis of current theory andpractice.

The initial focus on scholarly communication as a commons waschosen to more carefully focus the subject and to allow for the inte-gration of study areas that have been traditionally segregated, such asintellectual property rights, computer codes and infrastructure, academiclibraries, invention and creativity, open-source software, collaborativescience, citizenship and democratic processes, collective action, infor-mation economics, and the management, dissemination, and pre-servation of the scholarly record Other important dilemmas within theinformation commons, such as globalization, complexity, westernization

of knowledge, indigenous knowledge and rights, and the growingproblem of computer waste were kept in mind The group also exploredthe question of what models and frameworks of analysis are most beneficial in building a new research agenda for this complex commons

Some of the questions posed were: Is it possible to transfer lessonslearned from the environmental movement to the knowledge-commonsecosystem? What can research on the natural-resource commons teach

us about the dilemmas of scholarly communication? How can legalscholars, social scientists, and librarians and information specialists bestwork together to preserve the intellectual commons? Can new tech-nologies, rules, and self-governing communities help bridge the gapsbetween traditional libraries, publishers, researchers, and policymakers?The concrete goals of the meeting were to

• Identify essential “commons” of concern within the vast terrain ofscholarly communication

• Reach consensus on definitions

• Map some key knowledge gaps

• Discuss and apply an analytical framework, if possible

• Draft a report to The Andrew W Mellon Foundation outlining a newresearch agenda for the study of information or scholarly communica-tion as a commons

• Identify future actions to further this agenda

x Preface

The group sought to integrate perspectives that are frequently segregatedwithin the scholarly-communication arena, such as intellectual propertyrights; information technology (including hardware, software, code andopen source, and infrastructure); traditional libraries; digital libraries;invention and creativity; collaborative science; citizenship and demo-cratic processes; collective action; information economics; and the management, dissemination, and preservation of the scholarly record.Since that time, our ideas have grown and developed We have been for-tunate to add a couple of new scholars in the process, and regret that afew needed to withdraw due to previous commitments.

Our understanding of this complex commons has evolved considerablysince the initial meeting While our focus was originally on scholarly com-munication, we came to agree with Boyle, Lynch, and others that equat-ing the knowledge commons with the “scholarly-communication” arenawas too limiting and, perhaps, parochial It became more and moreapparent that any useful study of the users, designers, contributors, anddistributors of this commons could not be cordoned off to the domain ofthe ivory tower Who can any longer set the boundaries between schol-arly and nonscholarly information? On the other hand, we found it useful

to examine some of the long-enduring knowledge commons and relatedinstitutional rules, especially in the context of exponential technologicalchange

Participants included

James Boyle, William Neal Reynolds Professor of Law and Faculty

Co-Director of the Center for the Study of the Public Domain, Duke LawSchool, Durham, North Carolina

James Cox, Noah Langdale Jr Chair in Economics; Georgia Research

Alliance Eminent Scholar; Director, Experimental Economics Center,University of Arizona

Charlotte Hess, Director, Workshop Research Library, and Digital

Library of the Commons, Indiana University, Bloomington

Nancy Kranich, past president of the American Library Association;

former Associate Dean of Libraries at New York University

Peter Levine, Director of CIRCLE, The Center for Information and

Research on Civic Learning and Engagement; a research scholar at theInstitute for Philosophy & Public Policy at the University of Maryland;Steering Committee Chair of the Campaign for the Civic Mission ofSchools

Preface xi

Wendy Pradt Lougee, University Librarian and McKnight Presidential

Professor, University of Minnesota, University Libraries, Minneapolis,Minnesota

Clifford Lynch, Director of the Coalition for Networked Information

(CNI), Washington, D.C.; adjunct professor at the School of tion Management and Systems, University of California, Berkeley

Informa-Elinor Ostrom, Arthur F Bentley Professor of Political Science, Indiana

University; Co-Director, Workshop in Political Theory and Policy sis; Co-Director, Center for the Study of Institutions, Population, andEnvironmental Change

Analy-Charles Schweik, Assistant Professor, Department of Natural Resource

Conservation, Center for Public Policy and Administration, University

of Massachusetts, Amherst

Peter Suber, Policy Strategist for open access to scientific and scholarly

research literature; Director, Open Access Project at Public Knowledge;Research Professor of Philosophy at Earlham College; Author of SPARCOpen Access Newsletter; Editor of Open Access News Blog

Douglas Van Houweling, President and CEO of Internet2; Professor,

School of Information, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Donald Waters, Program Officer for Scholarly Communications, The

Andrew W Mellon Foundation

The sessions were expertly moderated by Margaret Polski, SeniorResearch Fellow at the Institute for Development Strategies, Indiana University (IU) Some of the attendees and active contributors to the dis-cussions were Blaise Cronin, Rudy Professor of Information Science andDean of the IU School of Library and Information Science; SuzanneThorin, Dean of the IU Libraries; Jorge Schement, Pennsylvania StateUniversity Distinguished Professor of Communications; Marco Janssen,Assistant Professor of Informatics; Robert Goehlert, IU Librarian forEconomics and Political Science; Harriette Hemmasi, Associate Dean, IULibraries; Laura Wisen, Coordinator of Workshop Research Library andSLIS graduate student; and Alice Robbin, IU Professor of InformationScience

While a couple of the original participants have dropped out due toprevious commitments, as noted, we have been fortunate to add two out-standing thinkers on the commons:

xii Preface

David Bollier, Journalist, Consultant, Senior Fellow, USC Annenberg

School for Communication, The Norman Lear Center, and Co-Founderand board member, Public Knowledge

Shubha Ghosh, Professor, Dedman School of Law, Southern Methodist

1 We are also extremely grateful to Patricia Lezotte for her expert assistance with the manuscript Finally, we wish to thank The Andrew

W Mellon Foundation for its essential support

Studying the Knowledge Commons

Introduction: An Overview of the

Knowledge Commons

Charlotte Hess and Elinor Ostrom

Two monks were arguing about a flag One said, “The flag is moving.” The other said, “The wind is moving.” The sixth patriarch, Zeno, happened to be passing

by He told them, “Not the wind, not the flag; mind is moving.”

—Douglas R Hofstadter, Gödel, Escher, Bach

The Purpose of This Book

This book is intended as an introduction to a new way of looking at

knowl-edge as a shared resource, a complex ecosystem that is a commons—a

resource shared by a group of people that is subject to social dilemmas.The traditional study of knowledge is subdivided into epistemic areas ofinterests Law professors argue the legal aspects of knowledge in regard tointellectual property rights Economists consider efficiency and transac-tion costs of information Philosophers grapple with epistemology Librar-ians and information scientists deal with the collection, classification,organization, and enduring access of published information Sociologistsexamine behaviors of virtual communities Physical scientists studynatural laws Every discipline, of course, has a claim on knowledge; this isthe common output of all academic endeavors The focus here is to explorethe puzzles and issues that all forms of knowledge share, particularly inthe digital age The intention is to illustrate the analytical benefits of apply-ing a multitiered approach that burrows deeply into the knowledge-commons ecosystem, drawing from several different disciplines

Brief History of the Study of the Knowledge Commons

The exploration of information and knowledge as commons is still in itsearly infancy Nevertheless, the connection between “information” in its

various forms and “commons” in its various forms has caught the tion of a wide range of scholars, artists, and activists The “information-commons” movement emerged with striking suddenness Before 1995,few thinkers saw the connection It was around that time that we began

atten-to see a new usage of the concept of the “commons.” There appears atten-tohave been a spontaneous explosion of “ah ha” moments when multipleusers on the Internet one day sat up, probably in frustration, and said,

“Hey! This is a shared resource!” People started to notice behaviors andconditions on the web—congestion, free riding, conflict, overuse, and

“pollution”—that had long been identified with other types of commons.They began to notice that this new conduit of distributing informationwas neither a private nor strictly a public resource

An increasing number of scholars found that the concept of the

“commons”1 helped them to conceptualize new dilemmas they wereobserving with the rise of distributed, digital information In the mid-1990s, articles suddenly started appearing in various disciplines address-ing some aspect of this new knowledge commons Some informationscientists made inroads in new areas of virtual communities andcommons (Rheingold 1993; Brin 1995; Hess 1995; Kollock and Smith1996) Others explored commons dilemmas on the web, such as con-gestion and free riding (Huberman and Lukose 1997; Gupta et al 1997).The largest wave of “new-commons” exploration appeared in the legal

reviews Commons became a buzzword for digital information, which

was being enclosed, commodified, and overpatented.2Whether labeledthe “digital,” “electronic,” “information,” “virtual,” “communication,”

“intellectual,” “Internet,” or “technological” commons, all these cepts address the new shared territory of global distributed information

con-Study of Traditional Commons

For us, the analysis of knowledge as a commons has its roots in thebroad, interdisciplinary study of shared natural resources, such as water

resources, forests, fisheries, and wildlife Commons is a general term that

refers to a resource shared by a group of people In a commons, theresource can be small and serve a tiny group (the family refrigerator), itcan be community-level (sidewalks, playgrounds, libraries, and so on),

or it can extend to international and global levels (deep seas, the phere, the Internet, and scientific knowledge) The commons can be wellbounded (a community park or library); transboundary (the Danube

atmos-4 Charlotte Hess and Elinor Ostrom

River, migrating wildlife, the Internet); or without clear boundaries(knowledge, the ozone layer).

Commons analysts have often found it necessary to differentiatebetween a commons as a resource or resource system and a commons as

a property-rights regime Shared resource systems—called common-pool

resources—are types of economic goods, independent of particular

prop-erty rights Common propprop-erty on the other hand is a legal regime—a

jointly owned legal set of rights (Bromley 1986; Ciriacy-Wantrup and

Bishop 1975) Throughout this book, the more general term commons

is preferred in order to describe the complexity and variability of edge and information as resources Knowledge commons can consist ofmultiple types of goods and regimes and still have many characteristics

knowl-of a commons

Potential problems in the use, governance, and sustainability of acommons can be caused by some characteristic human behaviors thatlead to social dilemmas such as competition for use, free riding, and over-harvesting Typical threats to knowledge commons are commodification

or enclosure, pollution and degradation, and nonsustainability

These issues may not necessarily carry over from the physical ronment to the realm of the knowledge commons There is a continualchallenge to identify the similarities between knowledge commons andtraditional commons, such as forests or fisheries, all the while exploringthe ways knowledge as a resource is fundamentally different fromnatural-resource commons

envi-With “subtractive” resources such as fisheries, for instance, oneperson’s use reduces the benefits available to another High sub-tractability is usually a key characteristic of common-pool resources.Most types of knowledge have, on the other hand, traditionally beenrelatively nonsubtractive In fact, the more people who share usefulknowledge, the greater the common good Consideration of knowledge

as a commons, therefore, suggests that the unifying thread in allcommons resources is that they are jointly used, managed by groups ofvarying sizes and interests

Self-organized commons require strong collective-action and governing mechanisms, as well as a high degree of social capital on the

self-part of the stakeholders Collective action arises “when the efforts of two

or more individuals are needed to accomplish an outcome” (Sandler

1992, 1) Another important aspect of collective action is that it is untary on the part of each individual (Meinzen-Dick, Di Gregorio, and

vol-Introduction 5

McCarthy 2004) Self-governance requires collective action combined

with “knowledge and will on the one hand, and supporting and tent institutional arrangements on the other hand.”3Social capital refers

consis-to the aggregate value of social networks (i.e., who people know), andthe inclinations that arise from these networks for people to do thingsfor each other (i.e., the norms of reciprocity) (Putnam 2000) Through-out this book we will see these three elements—collective action, self-governance, and social capital—frequently in play

Since the mid-1980s and the formation of the International tion for the Study of Common Property,4a large number of international,interdisciplinary studies have focused on various types of commonsresources More and more researchers began to realize that combiningdisciplines and pooling knowledge was the only way to arrive at deeperunderstandings of effective commons management One well-knownfisheries researcher illustrates the urgent need for a multidisciplinaryapproach in the introduction to her 1989 edited volume:

Associa-[The authors] share a belief that we can no longer afford to tackle these intractable problems in isolation from one another All efforts are needed All examples add something to our understanding The making of this book had already stimulated unusual collaboration in research and our hope is that it will further the process of bringing about better communication across disciplines and between theoreticians and practitioners (Pinkerton 1989)

To be able to understand the complex processes at work in a commonssuch as a fishery, researchers over the past twenty years5 have demon-strated the necessity of examining the biological, economic, political, andsocial elements involved that lead to the success or failure of the resourcesystem

While the bulk of commons research has been aimed at resource commons, particularly forests and land, fisheries, and waterresources, attention to human-made resources has increased dramaticallysince 1995 Whether the focus is traditional or new, however, the essen-tial questions for any commons analysis are inevitably about equity,

natural-efficiency, and sustainability Equity refers to issues of just or equal

appropriation from, and contribution to, the maintenance of a resource

Efficiency deals with optimal production, management, and use of the

resource Sustainability looks at outcomes over the long term Many

studies hone in on issues of property-rights regimes and the various lenges of common property Indeed, the important distinctions between

chal-the terms “common property” and “common-pool resource” grew out

of this scholarship

6 Charlotte Hess and Elinor Ostrom

One of the truly important findings in the traditional commonsresearch was the identification of design principles of robust, long-enduring, common-pool resource institutions (Ostrom 1990, 90–102).These principles are

• Clearly defined boundaries should be in place

• Rules in use are well matched to local needs and conditions

• Individuals affected by these rules can usually participate in modifyingthe rules

• The right of community members to devise their own rules is respected

by external authorities

• A system for self-monitoring members’ behavior has been established

• A graduated system of sanctions is available

• Community members have access to low-cost conflict-resolution mechanisms

• Nested enterprises—that is, appropriation, provision, monitoring andsanctioning, conflict resolution, and other governance activities—areorganized in a nested structure with multiple layers of activities

These principles were discovered after conducting a large set of ical studies on common-pool resource governance One of the centralfindings was that an extremely rich variety of specific rules were used insystems sustainable over a long time period No single set of specificrules, on the other hand, had a clear association with success Only aftergrappling with this wide diversity of robust systems was it possible toidentify general principles that tended to underlie the robust institutions.The eight factors identified were those found to exist in most robust institutions—but they were absent in failed systems These principleshave inspired hundreds of studies And they are, indeed, helpful as a pos-sible place to start an investigation But they are in no way prescriptive—nor are they models Rather, they are insightful findings in the analysis

empir-of small, homogeneous systems Whether they apply to the study empir-of largeand complex systems like the knowledge commons is a question forfurther research

Knowledge as a Resource

Knowledge in this book refers to all intelligible ideas, information,

and data in whatever form in which it is expressed or obtained Our

Introduction 7

thinking is in line with that of Davenport and Prusak (1998, 6), whowrite that “knowledge derives from information as information derivesfrom data.” Machlup (1983, 641) introduced this division of data-information-knowledge, with data being raw bits of information, infor-mation being organized data in context, and knowledge being theassimilation of the information and understanding of how to use it.

Knowledge as employed in this book refers to all types of

understand-ing gained through experience or study,6whether indigenous, scientific,scholarly, or otherwise nonacademic It also includes creative works,such as music and the visual and theatrical arts Some view knowledge

as polemical, in that it has “dual functions”—as a commodity and as aconstitutive force of society (Reichman and Franklin 1999; Braman1989) This dual functionality as a human need and an economic goodimmediately suggests the complex nature of this resource Acquiring anddiscovering knowledge is both a social process and a deeply personalprocess (Polanyi 1958)

Further, knowledge is cumulative With ideas the cumulative effect is

a public good, so long as people have access to the vast storehouse, butaccess and preservation were serious problems long before the advent ofdigital technologies An infinite amount of knowledge is waiting to beunearthed The discovery of future knowledge is a common good and atreasure we owe to future generations The challenge of today’s genera-tion is to keep the pathways to discovery open

Ensuring access to knowledge is made easier by examining the nature

of knowledge and identifying the ways in which it is a commons Thisapproach is in contrast to the standard economics literature In that lit-erature, knowledge has often been used as the classic example of a purepublic good—a good available to all and where one person’s use doesnot subtract from another’s use In the classic treatment of public goods,Paul A Samuelson (1954, 387–389) classified all of the goods that might

be used by humans as either pure private or pure public Samuelson and

others, including Musgrave (1959), placed all the emphasis on exclusion.

Goods where individuals could be excluded from use were consideredprivate goods When economists first dealt with these issues, they focused

on the impossibility of exclusion, but they later moved toward a fication based on the high cost of exclusion Goods were then treated as

classi-if there were only one dimension It was not until scholars developed atwofold classification of goods (V Ostrom and E Ostrom 1977) that asecond attribute of goods was fully acknowledged The new schema

8 Charlotte Hess and Elinor Ostrom

introduced subtractability (sometimes referred to as rivalry), where one

person’s use subtracted from the available goods for others, as an equallyimportant determinant of the nature of a good This led to a two-dimensional classification of goods (see figure 1.1)

Knowledge, in its intangible form, fell into the category of a publicgood since it was difficult to exclude people from knowledge oncesomeone had made a discovery One person’s use of knowledge (such asEinstein’s theory of relativity) did not subtract from another person’scapacity to use it This example refers to the ideas, thoughts, and wisdomfound in the reading of a book—not to the book itself, which would beclassified as a private good

Throughout this book, we use the terms knowledge commons and

information commons interchangeably While some chapters focus

specifically on scholarly and scientific communication, the issues cussed have crucial relevance that extend far beyond the ivory tower.Some aspect of knowledge in digital form is the primary focus of all thechapters, primarily because the technologies that allow global, interop-erable distribution of information have most dramatically changed thestructure of knowledge as a resource One of the critical factors of digitalknowledge is the “hyperchange”7 of technologies and social networksthat affects every aspect of how knowledge is managed and governed,including how it is generated, stored, and preserved

dis-The growing number of studies regarding various approaches to theknowledge commons indicates the complexity and interdisciplinarynature of these resources Some knowledge commons reside at the locallevel, others at the global level or somewhere in between There are

Common-pool resources

Libraries Irrigation systems

Figure 1.1

Types of goods Source: Adapted from V Ostrom and E Ostrom 1977

clearly multiple uses and competing interests in these commons rations have supported increased patents and copyright terms, whilemany scientists, scholars, and practitioners take actions to ensure freeaccess to information Universities find themselves on both sides of thecommons fence, increasing their number of patents and relying more andmore on corporate funding of research, while at the same time encour-aging open access and establishing digital repositories for their faculty’sresearch products.

Corpo-Most of the problems and dilemmas discussed in this book have arisensince the invention of new digital technologies The introduction of newtechnologies can play a huge role in the robustness or vulnerability of acommons New technologies can enable the capture of what were oncefree and open public goods This has been the case with the development

of most “global commons,” such as the deep seas, the atmosphere, theelectromagnetic spectrum, and space, for example This ability to capturethe previously uncapturable creates a fundamental change in the nature

of the resource, with the resource being converted from a nonrivalrous,nonexclusionary public good into a common-pool resource that needs

to be managed, monitored, and protected, to ensure sustainability andpreservation

The Tragicomedy of the Commons

The analysis of any type of commons must involve the rules, decisions,and behaviors people make in groups in relation to their shared resource

Economist Mancur Olson’s influential The Logic of Collective Action

(1965) is still being read by students today as a basic introduction to thechallenges of human organization Collective action, voluntary groupsworking to achieve a shared goal, is a key ingredient in understanding

commons Olson laid the groundwork for the study of incentives for

people to contribute to a joint endeavor and outlined the basic problem

of free riding, where one reaps benefits from the commons without

con-tributing to its maintenance

The impetus for countless studies has been the model of “The Tragedy

of the Commons” (Hardin 1968) Biologist Garrett Hardin created amemorable metaphor for overpopulation, where herdsmen sharing acommon pasture put as many cattle as possible out to graze, acting intheir own self-interest The tragedy is expressed in Hardin’s (1968, 1244)famous lines: “Ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, each

10 Charlotte Hess and Elinor Ostrom

pursuing his own best interest in a society that believes in the freedom

of the commons Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all.” This is one

of the most often cited and influential articles in the social sciences and

is still taught in large numbers of university courses worldwide

Hardin’s vivid narrative contains a number of contentions thatcommons scholars have repeatedly found to be mistaken: (1) he wasactually discussing open access rather than managed commons; (2) heassumed little or no communication; (3) he postulated that people actonly in their immediate self-interest (rather than assuming that someindividuals take joint benefits into account, at least to some extent); (4)

he offered only two solutions to correct the tragedy—privatization orgovernment intervention Whether studying California groundwaterbasins, North Atlantic fisheries, African community forests, or Nepalese

irrigation systems, scientific case studies frequently seem to answer: Au

contraire, Monsieur Hardin! There may be situations where this model

can be applied, but many groups can effectively manage and sustain

common resources if they have suitable conditions, such as appropriaterules, good conflict-resolution mechanisms, and well-defined groupboundaries.8

A knowledge-commons variation of the tragedy of the commons that

has become quite popular in the law literature is the concept of the

anti-commons The term was originally applied to extreme regulatory regimes

in real property.9Adapted by Michael Heller in 1998,10 the tragedy ofthe anticommons in the knowledge arena lies in the potential underuse

of scarce scientific resources caused by excessive intellectual propertyrights and overpatenting in biomedical research

Another frequently used model in commons analysis is the prisoner’sdilemma (PD), developed in the early days of game theory in 1950 bymathematician A W Tucker at Stanford (Cunningham 1967, 11) Theoriginal narrative of the two-person, noncooperative, non-zero-sumgame concerns two criminals who are interviewed separately about acrime Each is given a strong incentive by the prosecutor to informagainst the other The prisoner’s dilemma has remained popular perhapsbecause it is one of the simplest formal games to understand and canquickly illustrate the problems of collective action and irrational groupbehavior when trust and reciprocity have little opportunity to developand be expressed

All of these models—collective inaction, tragedy of the commons, and

the PD game—can be useful in helping to conceptualize some of the

Introduction 11

incentives in simple situations involving various forms of knowledgecommons The problem with them is that they have been overused asrealistic models of much more complex and dynamic situations Theyare frequently put forth as explaining why participants are “trapped” inperverse incentives and cannot themselves find ways of increasing trust,developing norms of reciprocity, or crafting new rules Yet they are cer-tainly not predictive of all situations involving a commons dilemma orany of the specific pet solutions offered to solve these problems As study after study demonstrates, there is no one solution to all commonsdilemmas.

Two Intellectual Histories

Curiously, most of the interdisciplinary work on the knowledgecommons to date is not an outgrowth of the natural-resource commonsliterature (although the tragedy of the commons still “plays” at all theknowledge-commons theaters) Rather, it is rooted in two distinct intel-lectual histories: the history of enclosure and the history of openness andinclusiveness—that is, democracy and freedom

Historically in Europe, “commons” were shared agricultural fields,grazing lands, and forests that were, over a period of 500 years, enclosed,with communal rights being withdrawn, by landowners and the state.The narrative of enclosure is one of privatization, the haves versus thehave-nots, the elite versus the masses This is the story of Boyle’s (2003)

“Second Enclosure Movement,” featuring the enclosure of the ble commons of the mind,” through rapidly expanding intellectual prop-erty rights The occurrence of enclosure is an important rallying cry onthe part of legal scholars, librarians, scientists, and, really, anyone who

“intangi-is alert to the increasing occurrence of privatization, commodification,and withdrawal of information that used to be accessible, or that willnever be available in our lifetimes

This trend of enclosure is based on the ability of new technologies to

“capture” resources that were previously unowned, unmanaged, andthus, unprotected This is the case with outer space, with the electro-magnetic spectrum, and with knowledge and information The case ofdistributed digital technologies is particularly complex and problematic,

as many stakeholders seek to renegotiate their interests in the new digitalenvironment Currently there are a vast array of enclosure threats to

12 Charlotte Hess and Elinor Ostrom

information and knowledge—including computer code as law (Lessig1999) and new intellectual property legislation (DMCA, TRIPS, theCopyright Term Extension Act, the Patriot Act, and so on)—that under-mine free access to public, scientific, and government information.11

Historically in the United States, commons has most often referred to

shared spaces that allow for free speech and the democratic process, mostnotably the New England town commons This is the focus of Benkler’s(2004) “commons-based production.”12It is the narrative of digital inter-operability, open science, collaboratories and scholarly networks, vol-untary associations, and collective action The U.S.-type commonsunderscores the importance of shared spaces and shared knowledge infostering viable democratic societies Libraries, as Kranich (2004) haspointed out, have been the quintessential strongholds of democracy Tra-ditionally, libraries have been the “protected areas” of the knowledgecommons and librarians are the stewards This narrative calls forth theurgency for all information users and providers to become stewards ofthe global digital commons

Clarifying Confusion Surrounding the Knowledge Commons

Two common sources of confusion in the knowledge-commons ture require clarification First, open access to information is a horse of

litera-a much different color thlitera-an open litera-access to llitera-and or wlitera-ater In the llitera-attercase, open access can mean a free-for-all, as in Hardin’s grazing lands,leading to overconsumption and depletion With distributed knowledgeand information the resource is usually nonrivalrous As Suber pointsout in this book, open access in the information ecosystem means freeand unfettered access, without costs or permissions Authors who choose

to make their works available for free may still retain their copyrights

In this instance, instead of having negative effects, open access of mation provides a universal public good: the more quality information,the greater the public good

infor-Second, the knowledge commons is not synonymous with open access,although the content and the community network of the open-accessmovement, as Suber and Ghosh discuss in their chapters, are types ofcommons Forgive us for repeating that a commons is a shared resourcethat is vulnerable to social dilemmas Outcomes of the interactions

of people and resources can be positive or negative or somewhere in

Introduction 13

between Frequently, within the intellectual arena, the concept of thecommons is a battle cry for free speech, universal open access, and self-governance, as a 2004 conference session illustrated:

With the Internet nurturing the sharing spirit inherent in man, commons has taken on a new meaning Free software proved spectacularly that the commons

is a viable alternative to commodification The term Digital Commons is widely used but only loosely defined, ranging from jointly owned intellectual property

to public property and the public domain Still, it has an obvious evocative power, and the potential to reconceptualize our knowledge environment and

to unite those fighting for its freedom (Program abstract for “The Future of the Digital Commons,” at the 2004 WOS3 Conference, http://wizards-of-os org/index.php?id=1551)

This use of the word commons is not infrequent It can be constructive

and often provides the impetus to collective action around the commons.But a commons is not value laden—its outcome can be good or bad, sus-tainable or not—which is why we need understanding and clarity, skilleddecision-making abilities, and cooperative management strategies inorder to ensure durable, robust systems

The Knowledge Ecosystem, Collective Action, and Self-Governance:

An Overview of the Chapters in This Book

The rapidly expanding world of distributed digital information has nite possibilities as well as incalculable threats and pitfalls The parallel,yet contradictory trends, where, on the one hand, there is unprecedentedaccess to information through the Internet but where, on the other, thereare ever-greater restrictions on access through intellectual property leg-islation, overpatenting, licensing, overpricing, withdrawal, and lack ofpreservation, indicate the deep and perplexing characteristics of thisresource

infi-Knowledge, which can seem so ubiquitous in digital form, is, in reality,more vulnerable than ever before When hard-copy journals, forinstance, were sold to libraries and individuals, the decentralization ofmultiple copies made the works robust When journals are in digital formand licensed to libraries or individuals, the works are centralized andvulnerable to the whims or happenstance of the publisher Users whorely on certain journals being indexed in LexisNexis or other large index-ing services, are frustrated to find one day that those journals weredropped and will no longer be indexed A vast amount of government

14 Charlotte Hess and Elinor Ostrom

information that used to be freely available online was withdrawn after9/11 and not replaced Or, cyberterrorists are too often able to infect ordamage a system or steal confidential information.

On the other hand, collective-action initiatives, such as open access,and Free/Libre and Open Source Software development, are ensuringmuch greater accessibility and robustness of digital resources Manyquestions exist as to how to develop future initiatives that will increasethe security of digital knowledge while not blocking access to those whowould benefit greatly from its use Several of these issues are addressed

in the chapters to follow in this book

The book is divided into three parts Part I, “Studying the KnowledgeCommons,” focuses on new ways to conceptualize and analyze knowl-edge as a complex, global, shared resource In chapter 2, David Bollierreflects on the evolution of the meaning of the commons from a conceptdescribing some historical developments to its current applications to therealm of knowledge Although Garrett Hardin’s essay brought new atten-tion to the idea of the commons, its misconceptions tended to discreditthe commons as an effective instrument of community governance Afterall, if a “tragedy” of the commons is inevitable, why study it? However,

in the mid-1980s, the flaws in this analysis were explored and scholarlyinterest in the commons began to take root Interest in the commonsgrew further in the mid-1990s as the Internet engendered new types ofsocial communities and communication in an entirely new public sphere,cyberspace Yet even with these developments, the concept of thecommons remains novel and alien to many people Mindful of thishistory, Bollier helps readers develop new cognitive maps that enablethem to visualize the knowledge commons in a new light He points outthe massive shift in our daily life that has resulted from being online,and how the radical changes in social and economic aspects of knowl-edge production have generated new problems unforeseen only a fewdecades ago Now, instead of being worried about the absence of clearlydefined property rights, serious thinkers are equally concerned with theimposition of private control over knowledge that many argue should be

in the public domain The challenge is how to blend systems of rules andnorms related to this new commons to guarantee general access to theknowledge that empowers humans while ensuring recognition andsupport for those who create knowledge in its various forms

In the third chapter, Elinor Ostrom and Charlotte Hess present theInstitutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework that has been

Introduction 15

developed over several decades by colleagues at the Workshop in ical Theory and Policy Analysis at Indiana University The IAD frame-work originally emerged from our extensive research on urban publicgoods, including policing and education (see McGinnis 1999 for anoverview, and Ostrom 2005 for an extensive exposition) It was mostfully developed as we and our colleagues struggled with an understand-ing of complex linked social-ecological systems; we were trying to under-stand how diverse rules affect the likelihood of sustaining or destroyingcommon-pool resources, including groundwater basins, irrigationsystems, grazing systems, and forests We think the framework will now

Polit-be of value in understanding knowledge as a commons—in regard toboth the public-good aspects of this commons and the common-poolresource aspects Our goal is to make the framework as accessible as pos-sible in order to heighten interest and facilitate further applications As

an illustration, the framework is loosely applied to the action arena ofbuilding a university repository, a locally produced, globally harvestedcomplex commons

Part II of the book, “Protecting the Knowledge Commons,” containscontributions from several well-known authors concerning the problem

of safeguarding the knowledge commons These chapters draw from thetradition of guarding against enclosure of the commons In chapter 4,Nancy Kranich looks at different types of enclosures of knowledgecommons She gives a broad review of the role of research libraries inprotecting knowledge, as well as making it available to citizens, as cor-nerstones of democracy in the contemporary world Kranich provideshistorical background to the current enclosures facing research libraries,including those caused by the skyrocketing costs of journals To a largeextent, the current budget crises are an inadvertent consequence of schol-arly societies turning the publishing of their journals over to private firms

in the 1980s in order to gain high-quality printed journals at a lowercost to the academic editors and universities involved The cost of jour-nals has risen more than three times the increase in the consumer priceindex since 1986! This has had further ramifications for the publication

of books and the availability of printed scholarly communications, cially those located in universities facing stringent budgetary pressures.These developments, as well as amendments to copyright laws, increasedgovernment secrecy, and other enclosures, contextualize Kranich’sreviews of contemporary efforts to utilize new technologies and new legalconcepts to reclaim scientific and intellectual assets through diverse open-

espe-16 Charlotte Hess and Elinor Ostrom

access initiatives She also suggests ways to advance the theory and tice of sustainable knowledge commons.

prac-James Boyle is a well-known and articulate spokesperson for the tection of the intellectual public domain In chapter 5, he brings togethertwo seemingly disparate thoughts Drawing from the work of sociolo-gist Robert Merton, he discusses the possible impact of fencing off schol-arship from the general public He postulates that greater access tocultural and scientific materials by individuals and groups outside theacademy might have a remarkable impact on scholarship, culture, andpossibly even science He urges that the knowledge commons not berestricted to the scholarly community Boyle also writes about the fencingoff of ideas through copyright and licensing restrictions He poses someinteresting questions Would the original author of a very successfulseries of books—he uses J K Rowling’s Harry Potter books as anexample—really be concerned that copyright protected her work forseventy years after her death rather than merely fifty years? Yes, if a cor-poration held the rights, they would be concerned to gain protection for

pro-as long pro-as a government wpro-as willing to pro-assign it Those extra years,however, have nothing to do with creating an incentive to put in thehours of work needed to produce good books, pathbreaking research,

or enticing music At a substantial cost to the public, those extra years

of protection generate profit to those who did not make the originalinvestment in producing creative work The chapter illustrates thatknowledge is the domain of the public and that as much of it as possi-ble needs to be freely available

In chapter 6, Donald Waters takes on the difficult problem of guarding and preserving the knowledge commons by focusing in on thelinks that are preserved versus the links that disappear In traditionalpublication, scholars use footnotes to link their statements to the author-itative source for their statement As more and more scholars link theirwork to the web pages of other scholars, the problem of preserving thedigital information becomes ever-more critical, especially when theaverage life expectancy of a web page is only a few months! Preservingelectronic scholarly journals becomes a key challenge for the scientificcommunity, given the number of citations that are currently made towhat might become an ephemeral source in the future While books andjournals were never published in huge quantities in prior eras, librarieslooked upon their role as one of preserving these precious resources forfuture ages Waters points to the problem of free riding in creating and

safe-Introduction 17

managing archival records Without good archives, the scientific munication of today may be lost to the scholars of tomorrow Waterslays out the key features that are needed to achieve the preservation ofelectronic knowledge in regard to legal protection, business models, andincentives to achieve this.

com-Part III, “Building New Knowledge Commons,” draws from the lectual history of collective action, the free exchange of ideas, and col-laboration in the interest of the common good In chapter 7, Peter Subermakes an eloquent and convincing argument for the advantages ofmaking research and publications available online through open access.Every author has the ability to participate in building one of the richestknowledge commons by contributing peer-reviewed journal articles andtheir preprints, the primary literature of science Suber concretely laysout the steps needed to understand and to participate in the open-access(OA) movement He discusses the peculiarities of royalty-free literature,the conditions and incentives that lead authors to consent to OA, andsome obstacles to an OA commons that have the flavor of a tragedy ofthe commons Importantly, he discusses different funding models, since,while the user has free access, the producer faces the costs of peer review,manuscript preparation, and online dissemination, and sometimes alsothe costs of digitizing, copyediting, and long-term preservation Hepoints out the difference between open-access repositories that do notattempt to provide peer review and open-access journals that continuethe important task of peer review of scholarly communication The long-term existence of broadcast television and radio, which provide freeaccess to users, makes Suber confident that long-term digital publishing

intel-in an open-access forum is fintel-inancially feasible It does, however, requireconsiderable entrepreneurship in today’s transition from entirely printedmaterials to a combination of print and electronic publication Suberthen provides a good analysis of the various categories of intellectualproperty He concludes by outlining the variety of tragedies of the open-access commons that universities, publishers, scholars, and the publicwill need to overcome

In chapter 8, Shubha Ghosh weaves a compelling case for standing the role of intellectual property rights in building the knowl-edge commons Focusing specifically on patents and copyrights, heexamines a number of pat concepts or solutions and shows that they arenot so pat We are led through the arguments of intellectual property asconstrictive, as facilitative, and as irrelevant and shown that there is a

under-18 Charlotte Hess and Elinor Ostrom

logic to all three of these positions Ghosh then refocuses the argument

from one about intellectual property as an end to one of intellectual property as a means in which it can be used as a tool in constructing the

information commons He proposes three guiding principles that can beutilized to inform intellectual property policy and to effectively designthe commons: imitation, exchange, and governance Ghosh exploresimportant puzzles involving the separation of the market and the state,showing that these are not reasonably separated

In chapter 9, Peter Levine demonstrates how a knowledge commonscan be used effectively to stimulate students and citizens more generally

to engage in research of public value, using as well as contributing to theknowledge commons He draws on his own experience with the PrinceGeorge’s Information Commons in Maryland near the University ofMaryland Levine makes a useful distinction between a libertariancommons and an associational commons A libertarian commons is onethat anyone can access if they choose Associational commons are open

to their own members but may be not be open to the public at large.Before the digital age, paper libraries were shared by associations of indi-viduals living in communities Levine argues that commons need pro-tection by groups interested in their production, care, and maintenance.Thus, he argues that associational commons will be an important part

of the democratic use of knowledge commons in the future He describesthe effort by the University of Maryland to develop an effective associ-ational commons for students and citizens living in Prince George’sCounty By producing knowledge for the commons, students learn aboutpublic issues in a way they would not do otherwise Levine then urgesother scholars to develop associational commons of this type as a way

of producing important contemporary knowledge, and as a way of ing students about their own communities as well as how to produceand evaluate knowledge about communities

train-In chapter 10, Charles Schweik argues that the collaborative ples around Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FOSS) developmentprojects could potentially be applied to develop new knowledgecommons in science To make this point, Schweik first applies the insti-tutional analysis and development framework summarized in chapter 3

princi-to analyze the various action situations involved in the open-source ware commons He then links the various action situations faced by par-ticipants in the biophysical world, the relevant communities, and therules-in-use affecting the action situations involved in producing and

soft-Introduction 19

protecting software Schweik provides a good historical overview of theeffort to develop open-source software licensing agreements and of howthese kinds of information-protection and information-productionarrangements have blossomed He then extends the analysis to include

a broader array of artifacts beyond that of software to discuss the generalproblem of licensing scientific digital content Readers who are unfamil-iar with the development of open-source software will find this chapter

a particularly useful history and summary of developments

Wendy Pradt Lougee focuses chapter 11 on the profound changes ring in the world of scholarly communication Her discussion of thecommons explores the increasingly collaborative communities within aca-demia Whereas university libraries used to be a separate domain from therest of the academy, the boundaries for producing and disseminatingscholarly information, as well as those surrounding the stakeholdersinvolved in the process, have become quite blurred In the scholarly-communication realm, the focus today is on process rather than product Lougee looks at the traditional methods of scholarly communication and demonstrates the diversity of norms among academicdisciplines Those differences are evidenced in how particular disciplineshave adapted to the digital environment, as well as in how libraries haveevolved from being archives or stewards of information goods to beingcollaborators and potentially catalysts within interest-based communities.Chapter 12 provides a perfect example of the blurring of the bound-aries and stakeholders in the knowledge commons Economists James C.Cox and J Todd Swarthout describe a digital library that they, as a teach-ing facility, built independently of the university’s library At center stage

occur-is EconPort, an open-access, open-source digital library for students andresearchers in experimental microeconomics—in essence, a new knowl-edge commons Cox and Swarthout describe the content of EconPort andthe educational philosophy that underlies its creation From an econo-mist’s perspective, they present a marvelous case study of the incentives,risks, and possible negative externalities of creating and maintaining alocally based, discipline-focused digital library and experimental labora-tory They also discuss issues of preservation of such an individualizedresource

Where This Book Leads Us

In this book we are plowing a new field and, perhaps, sowing some seeds.Our hope is that the chapters herein will serve as guideposts for further

20 Charlotte Hess and Elinor Ostrom

research The book brings together scholars from diverse disciplines, lines some critical issues within the new types of commons, and presents

out-an out-analytical tool that helps elucidate the complexities of the rapidlychanging environments in the world of knowledge and information

We hope the readers of this book take away a strong sense that thereare indeed analytical commonalities underlying many problems of deepconcern today How do we build effective forms of collective action andself-organizing, self-governing initiatives? How do we break free frompath-dependent and limiting systems and creatively design new systemsthat tap into the limitless capabilities of digital information technologies?How do we effectively safeguard all that is of value in the maintenanceand preservation of the cultural and scientific record? Given such a newcornucopia of digital information, how do we assess priorities? How do

we evaluate how we are doing? How do we monitor our progress? Who should govern the Internet? How are equity and fairness achieved?How do we protect the interests and creative freedom of authors whilealso ensuring wide access to new knowledge and information? How areuniversities going to cover the costs of purchasing journals that are skyrocketing in price? How will the rise of digital repositories affect academic publishers? How are scholarly products that are repro-duced digitally going to be preserved for the centuries to come? What are appropriate and effective business models for knowledge preservation?

All of the questions above relate to ongoing challenges in organizingeffective institutional arrangements to enhance the production, access,use, and preservation of diverse knowledge commons This is a fasci-nating era in which to participate in these interesting questions and todevelop better analytical and empirical tools with which to craft answers

Notes

1 Commons is an awkward word in the English language The same word is

used for both the singular and plural forms.

2 For example, see Reese 1995; Aoki 1998; Cohen 1998; Benkler 1998; also Hess and Ostrom 2003.

3 See Wagner 2005, 176, referring to Vincent Ostrom’s concept of governance.

self-4 See http://www.iascp.org This association changed its name to the tional Association for the Study of the Commons in June 2006.

Interna-5 For a history of modern commons research, see Hess 2000, 2003.

Introduction 21

6 Adapted from the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language

(1969).

7 Barrett (1998, 288) defines hyperchange as “a combination of linear,

expo-nential, discontinuous, and chaotic change.”

8 Feeny et al 1990; Andelson 1991; Hanna, Folke, and Mäler 1996; Bromley

et al 1992 See also The Comprehensive Bibliography of the Commons at

http://dlc.dlib.indiana.edu/cpr/index.php.

9 The original concept was developed by Frank Michelman in “Ethics, nomics, and the Law of Property” (1982).

Eco-10 Heller 1998; see also Heller and Eisenberg 1998.

11 A great deal has been written on various types of information enclosures (see Benkler 1999; Boyle 2003; Bollier 2004; Lange 2003; Lessig 2001; Shiva 2002; David 2000).

12 Benkler (2004, 1110) writes that “production is ‘commons-based’ when no one uses exclusive rights to organize effort or capture its value, and when coop- eration is achieved through social mechanisms other than price signals or man- agerial directions.”

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Introduction 25